LOS ANGELES, April 1 (UPI) — A knife purportedly found on the site of O.J. Simpson‘s former estate nearly 20 years ago is not connected to the murders of the football star’s ex-wife and her friend, the Los Angeles Police Department said Friday.
Authorities conducted a number of forensic tests on the rusted 5-inch fixed-blade knife, including blood, fingerprint and DNA examinations. The results of those tests, police said, confirm that the cutting tool has no connection to the brutal June 12, 1994, murders.
“That is not the knife,” an LAPD source familiar with the investigation told the Los Angeles Times Friday. “There is no evidence related to the crime.”
The knife was supposedly found by a construction worker at theNsite in the posh Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood in the late 1990s. The worker was assisting in the demolition of Simpson’s home after the property’s new owner decided to raze the estate, which was built in 1977, and build a new one.
A few years later, the worker purportedly handed the knife over to a retired LAPD officer, who was working security on a film set. When the police department showed no interest in taking possession of the knife, the officer said, he kept it for years until its existence was recently rediscovered.
The Times reported that a police source had previously expressed doubts on the knife’s connection to the Simpson case following a preliminary assessment of the item.
Simpson was tried and acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1995, but the murder weapon used in the vicious attacks was never located.
The eight-month-long criminal proceeding, often referred to as “the trial of the century,” captivated the attention of the world and is the basis for a new FX television miniseries, The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which will air its final episode Tuesday.
Simpson is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence in Las Vegas for a 2007 robbery.
